


Laser Tag and other slices of life

by LettdViolet



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Character tags aren’t working sorry :(, Gen, Slice of Life, To me anyway, abandoned, also they have funny nicknames for combat strategies, danny likes food that glows, ghost cores explained, ghost fry sauce, many headcanons, sam is goth for a reason apparently, things are a bit more ghostly here, thought id share anyway, tucker doesn’t like snakes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-11-21 19:41:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18146585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LettdViolet/pseuds/LettdViolet
Summary: Abandoned work I thought I’d share. No S3, full of squashed-together hcs in a vague storyline. No ending unfortunately. Fun things included like glowing dry sauce, overdramatic gothy explanations, overeager young agents, and laser tag, of course.





	Laser Tag and other slices of life

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, friends. This lovely thing has no plot but many headcanons. I enjoyed writing it, and I hope you enjoy reading it. AU in which S3 never happened, and things continue in the same vein as S2 until senior year.

_ Break, break, break, _ I chanted inside my head. There were only three people between me and the machine of death. Um, the scanner that measured students' ectocontamination levels. Everybody in town had at least a slight reading, but after the latest Ember disaster, the newly-formed Ghost Hunters in Charge (okay, actually just the EctoContainment Unit) had decided that everybody needed to be checked for lingering issues. It was a total surprise, or I would have skipped out on school. Not like it had been the first time. A cold ball of tension hardened inside me as I wrung my fingers inside my shirt.

 

I ran through excuses in my head. Everybody assumed that all the teenagers would have higher levels, being the main targets of Ember's music, and it wasn't totally a wild shot to assume that she would have singled out a few. I was sure that my two friends would bluff for me and say that I had been chosen for special duties or something. Okay, check. That worked. Two people between me and the big metal doorway now.

 

That only left the problem of  _ de _ contamination. Every time I even got a whiff of that nasty gel stuff they used, I not only got a headache, but my ghost powers weakened considerably. I wasn't sure what direct contact would do. At least Sam was glad it was all-natural. The gel stuff was homemade (thankfully not at my house), derived from blood blossoms. My friends had bravely suffered a few rounds of decontamination before, but I wasn't so sure I could get out of it this time. What if they just attacked me with those evil aerosol cans?

 

Okay, one more person. My brain ran in circles, trying to figure out a solution. I could ice the scanner, but that would be a definite sign of ghostly activity. The goal was to appear  _ normal _ . Human. completely fine. I had to nix trying to mess with the electronics, as I had only succeeded in doing a few times, for the same reasons. If I made my core go intangible, that would cut out some of the numbers, but not enough. Could I fake food poisoning and run to the bathroom right now?

 

"Next."

 

Oh, crap. Nope. No way was I going through that evil doorway. The beeps of other detectors fuzzed as blood rushed in my ears. I stepped forward, thinking hard. These things ran some energy down and then reacted when some bounced back, right? The solution was staring me in the face.

 

"You okay, kid?" The college guy manning this scanner was looking at me funny.

 

"Oh, yeah, I'm okay," I lied, then relaxed as best I could. 

 

A moment before I passed through the doorway thing, I went mostly intangible. If you were really watching, parts of me might have blurred, but I was able to keep pretty much all of my visible skin from doing anything you could see. As a result, the scanner beeped in confirmation that I was within safe levels. I breathed out in relief and joined the growing throng to get out of the gym. Sam and Tucker had gotten out far ahead of me, since I had been late for school. Again.

 

Then something else blared a warning. I jumped at least a foot and whirled around to find the source of the alarm. People around me shuffled to do the same. I backed up a few steps, burying myself deeper into the group. Unfortunately, I stood head and shoulders above most of the tiny freshmen. I didn't easily hide in a crowd like that.

 

"No need to panic!" an ECU member shouted through a bullhorn. "Please stay where you are!"

 

More official-looking young adults dressed in black held scanners I recognized out in front of them. My heart dropped. I had been so afraid of the contamination detectors that I forgot about the ghost activity sensors! What an idiot.

 

Students moved around nervously, and a few near the door bolted from the gym. That left a new ring of students with sudden free access to the outside world. I stepped back with everybody else, hoping to get to the door quickly. Pressed in as I was, I didn't dare try anything ghostly, so I was stuck moving at a snail's pace with the rest of them.

 

Too late. Before I could even get close to the doors, I was surrounded by a few scary people only a few years older than myself, but with a lot more weaponry. Well, visible weaponry, I amended. Stuff like Fenton Thermoses and a few small guns went away with the rest of my ghost self when I transformed. I wasn't sure how that happened, but I was glad it did anyway.

 

"He's displaying signs of serious ectocontamination," one said.

 

How could I play this?

 

Luckily, a few years of dealing with this sort of thing on a virtual daily basis had given me good tactical skills. I looked into the future at a few different stories, then chose the last likely to backfire. Hopefully.

 

I decided to laugh. "What, me? Of course I am. My parents are the Fentons." Anybody who worked in a ghost industry here knew who my parents were, and the ECU specifically knew a lot about them. They were the official heads of the ECU, even if somebody else made the really important decisions.

 

"We're going to have to pull you aside for a few minutes. A decontamination is probably in order." An older girl, one I had run into before as Phantom, came forward. The confident way she held her ectogun on her shoulder probably would have been attractive, with a tight blonde ponytail and pretty eyes, if she hadn't also been evil personified.

 

Okay, that was unfair. They were just doing their jobs, and they were good at it. Their work helped people. But it also made it harder for  _ me _ to help people in, not sorry, more effective ways.

 

I followed the girl reluctantly, leaving the relative safety of the freshman crowd behind. The students just turned back to the doors and continued to filter out, not particularly concerned. Decontamination was harmless.

 

Apparently.

 

We approached a few temporary shower stall things, which gave off a strong smell of the blood blossom goop. Ew. A few portable tables and some "borrowed" desks held a myriad of ghost fighting equipment. I recognized a lot of it, since Fenton tech was still the industry standard. Most of it would, if turned on, pose a problem. Tucker could calibrate my parents' personal tech to ignore me, but there wasn't a lot we could do for the stuff they sold.

 

The girl turned around with a hard expression. I tried to look casual. "We have a problem."

 

I waited for her to explain, hoping I appeared innocent.

 

"You set off the activity alarms, but not the contamination detectors. That should be impossible. Even accidental ghostly activity should have enough contamination to alert the detectors. And I don't think 'my parents are Fentons' is going to cut it." The girl scowled. "Do you have any explanation?"

 

Actually, I did. I had spent the last thirty seconds making it up. But first, plan A: would they just forget it?

 

"No. Are you sure your instruments are working right?" 

 

"Of  _ course _ they are," she snapped back. "Something weird happened, and I'm not letting you go without an explanation."

 

Well, that stank. It didn't look like they would just write the whole thing off as a faulty detector. I couldn't pretend nothing had happened. Okay, then, plan B. Half-truths.

 

I looked away in annoyance, then faded one of my hands from the visible spectrum and pretended not to notice. The girl immediately zeroed in on it, though, as I hoped she would. I didn't hope for the immediate ectogun barrel in my face, but a victory was still a victory. 

 

"What was that?" she demanded. A few of the other ECU guys watching muttered and reached for their own weapons. Some alarms went off.

 

"What was what?" I asked, then followed her eyes to my hand. "Ahh!" I shook the arm, then made it visible again. "Ahh!"

 

"You have five seconds to explain." The girl's ectogun powered up with an ominous green glow, and I could hear others around me doing the same.

 

I opened my mouth, a flimsy but hopefully satisfactory excuse ready to go, but I didn't need it. My parents had noticed the commotion and rushed over. I winced. I had forgotten about them.

 

"Danny!" Mom called. She and Dad rushed over. The blonde girl reluctantly lowered her gun, though she narrowed her eyes at me. My parents shouldered their way into the circle of ECU members that had formed around me.

 

"Anna, what in the world is going on?" Mom sounded defensive, and I had to quickly rethink a few details of my stories so that my parents would believe them, too.

 

The girl - Anna - scowled deeper. "Your son set off our ghostly activity sensors, and his arm went invisible. I have a strong suspicion that this isn't actually your son."

 

I blinked. "What?" That was unexpected, until I thought about it more. Obviously, they thought I was overshadowed. I hoped they didn't pull out any more detectors... I might have to text Tucker or Sam for a distraction.

 

"No ghost would mess with my son!" Dad put a fist in the air, then leaned close to me. I could smell fudge on his breath. "Prove you're Danny."

 

"Um..." I said hesitantly, then glanced at Mom. She nodded, like "go ahead". Of course she would. I thought for a second. "We would have had turkey for Thanksgiving at Grandma's house, but Dad insisted on stuffing it with fudge, so we ordered pizza instead."

 

Dad straightened up and beamed. "It's my son! Not a ghost!"

 

I swallowed as I caught sight of Anna's face. I knew what she was going to say.

 

"So how do you explain the invisible hand?"

 

"Actually," I cut in. My turn. "I think I know. Hey, Mom, remember those cookies that you left out during that one temperature experiment? The ones that came to life and bit Dad's finger?"

 

Mom nodded with some confusion. 

 

"I... ate a couple," I finished. Half-truth. I had actually eaten almost all of those cookies, and hid the rest in the kitchen, letting my parents think the cookies had run away or whatever. For some reason, a lot of the ectocontaminated food Mom and Dad made on accident was actually pretty good, and seemed to even make my ghost half stronger. I had even stolen some base ectoplasm samples to use as fry sauce. Sam thought I was insane, which was probably accurate. Tucker had tried it, then had to suffer a whole ten minutes of only being able to speak ghost. We all thought that was hilarious.

 

"That explains it," Mom said, looking relieved. She turned to Anna and clipped her voice harshly. "So you can turn the safety of that gun back on and holster it. You don't need it."

 

Anna didn't look happy about it, but she did as asked. Mom thought it was a good idea to send me through decontamination anyway, but it turned out that it was easier to avoid than I had expected.

 

You took your clothes off inside of a little temporary stall, then went into a second part and pressed two buttons: one for the blood blossom goop, then another to rinse it all off you. I simply stayed inside the first part and pressed the goop button, then actually stood under the rinsing water. No cameras anywhere meant that nobody knew I hadn't actually been dunked in the icky stuff.

 

Even still, I walked out of that stall with a massive headache and wet hair. I felt my icy ghost core shrink away from the smell. It wasn't pleasant being so close to nature's most repellent flower. And that's counting the one that smells like poop.

 

The rest of the day went relatively smoothly. No ghost attacks during school, so that was good. Just a little spider thing chewing at some building's foundations as we walked home. I told Tucker and Sam about the speed bump of decontamination, and we laughed it off. I didn't let them know about the headache, though. They didn't need to worry even more. It was one little nerve-wracking thing that had turned out completely fine. I'd gone through dozens of those.

 

But things were only starting to go badly.

"What do you  _ mean _ , the reading is stronger than last time?" I floated over to Tucker and peered over his shoulder to see the screen for myself. Yep, my ghost core was seriously increasing in strength. I groaned and covered my face with my hands. A whole new set of problems to worry about.

"Hasn't it gotten stronger since freshman year, though?" Tucker pointed out.

 

"Not this much!"

 

"But... isn't a stronger core a good thing?" Sam asked, sounding bewildered. I looked up at her, twinkling in the dim green light of the portal in my basement. 

 

"Well, yeah, it's a good thing if you want more attention from the ghost scanners," I complained. I threw myself onto my back and stayed hovering right where I was. A piece of my now-white hair flopped into my eyes, and I shoved it away, annoyed. Maybe I should listen to my mom and get it cut.

 

"Drama queen," Tucker smiled. Then he turned to Sam. "The stronger a ghost core is, the more likely smaller things will set detectors off."

 

Sam spun around in her office chair a few times. "So that deal with the ECU today..."

 

"Wouldn't have happened a few weeks ago," I finished for her. We sat in silence for a moment.

 

Tucker fiddled with some wires connecting his PDA to my parents' computers. "That's the last one, by the way," he added. A few scanners beeped, getting some last-second readings. I glared at them. If they actually turned on, they'd probably train right on me, even though we'd calibrated them years ago to ignore my ectosignature if Tucker wasn't the one directing them. More powerful was good, but it also meant that my human life would be getting a lot harder. A scowl settled on my face. I was barely keeping up with sabotaging my parents' inventions as it was. 

 

"Is it just me," Sam said suddenly, "or is it getting colder in here?" I raised my head to see her hugging her arms.

 

Tucker finally disconnected the last wire and paused, his finger on a power button. "Woah, yeah, it is."

 

"I can't feel anything," I said, but sat up and drifted over to the wall-mounted thermometer. "But it's dropped, like, ten degrees." 

 

I turned around and we stared at each other. Then I zipped back to my backpack, reversed my transformation with the usual bone-chilling feeling, and followed Sam and Tucker out of the lab. Whatever the cause of the temperature drop, Mom and Dad would be alerted and come to check it out. We made our way upstairs to my room, then started our make-it-look-like-we've-been-here-the-whole-time routine. I dumped my backpack's innards out onto the floor, then opened a new bag of chips and poured half of it into a bowl.

 

The entire process only took a few seconds, and soon we were huddled together on the floor next to my bed, Tucker in the middle with his PDA out.

 

"Okay, Tuck, let's see the rest of those readings," Sam said.

 

Tucker turned on his explaining voice. "First of all, Danny, you'll be happy to know that I clocked you at just under a hundred fifty miles per hour again. And that's just down in the lab. I bet you could go a lot faster outside, when you have time to speed up."

 

"Yeah, yeah, we know that," Sam interrupted. "Get to the good stuff."

 

I grinned and agreed. "Yeah, Tuck, we've got more to talk about than just speed. Though speed is pretty cool."

 

"Cool, huh?" Tucker's eyebrows waggled. "It's funny you should mention that. I actually took the liberty of rifling through some of your parents' files." He brought up a picture of an ectopus on the screen. "Do you know what ghost cores are?"

 

Sam shook her head.

 

"Well, yeah," I answered. "I feel it, nice and cold in there." I tapped my chest. "But... besides the fact that they exist, I don't know anything. It's not like I read my parents' research reports for fun, you know?"

 

"Yeah, they can be dense. Anyway." Tucker tapped his PDA. "Turns out, ghost cores are what a ghost  _ is _ , at its most basic. Guys like this ectopus here are mostly core." He touched the screen, and a ball of bright red filled the ectopus's sack of a body, leaving it to look like a cherry with too many legs.

 

Tucker continued. "They're easier to beat because they're animalistic, but also because when you hit their body, you hit their core. On the other hand, most humanoid ghosts have more concentrated core and can command bigger amounts of ectoplasm." An image of Ember replaced the ectopus. I rolled my eyes at the choice. A little ball of dark red sat in the center of her chest, a computer edit. "Ember's ectosignature is a lot stronger, and it's so concentrated that it's hidden in her body pretty well. Ghosts like that are harder to fight because you can't just hit their cores with a random shot."

 

"What's the point, Tuck?" Sam asked. She was paying strict attention.

 

"The point, my dear Watson, is that Danny's core is absolutely tiny. And probably freezing, but I'm not going to stick a thermometer inside his chest to find out."

 

I shuddered at the thought. "Me neither. So smaller means more powerful?"

 

"Sometimes," Tuck shrugged. "Yours might be little because you're only  _ half _ ghost, but you've beaten plenty of full ghosts with bigger cores, so I think we can say that in your case, yes. Smaller means more powerful."

 

"And you said freezing. What does that have to do with anything?" Sam dug in a newly-opened chip bag and pulled one out. That was one snack she'd eat along with Tucker and me, since potatoes, sunflowers, and salt crystals were all faceless.

 

"Okay, here's the thing." Tucker actually put down his PDA. He scooted out of our huddle and turned to face us, so we made a circle. For once, Tucker looked dead serious.  _ Dead. Hah. _ I broke a chip in half.

 

He started to talk, a bit slower than normal, as if he wanted us to really understand. "Danny's core is, as far as I can tell, unique. Most cores are based on fire or something. A few on electricity, which would make sense to be Danny's, seeing as..." Tucker trailed off, but we all knew what he was getting at. I died, or half-died, by electrocution. He was right, electricity would make sense.

 

"But I'm not electric," I prompted.

 

Tucker blinked. "Yeah. You're not. Your core is  _ ice _ , Danny. I don't know how that works, but the only ghost in your parents' huge database with an ice core is you."

 

A chill, ironically, ran through me. Ice, huh? I felt my core buzz as I thought about it. Yeah, it was definitely cold. I remembered a few months ago when I had stuck a thermometer in my mouth because I was worried I was getting a fever. It read something about normal, but I felt horrible. Even Jazz said I'd had a fever, even though the thermometer said otherwise. Later, when I had recovered, I'd checked my temperature again. It was far below normal, almost at hypothermia levels, but I was totally fine.

 

Yeah, ice would make sense. And if my parents knew about it... I knew now that they had never earnestly hunted me. Um, Phantom. If they really wanted to find me, and knew that their scanners were useless in finding my ectosignature, they could just calibrate their sensors to read for low temperatures. In fact, I thought back to yesterday morning, when Dad had been telling me about some new invention of his. I didn't remember much, but it had something to do with a thermometer and a ghost scanner. Had they come to the same conclusion? Find a pocket of ice, find me. What would happen when they seriously decided to look for me?

 

"Oh, okay, that makes total sense," Sam said. Her voice was wavering from chattering teeth. Tucker was rubbing his arms, too, even though he was wearing long sleeves.

 

"Oh, crap, guys, I'm sorry," I said quickly, realizing what must have happened. "I guess it was me down in the lab, too." My friends looked freezing, but I felt totally fine. In fact, my room was usually a bit warm for my taste, and right now it was awesome.

 

"Can you make it warmer?" Sam protested.

 

"Uh..."

 

"No," Tucker answered for me. "Ice is cold, not warm. But you  _ can _ stop making it colder!"

 

"How?!" I asked in desperation. 

 

"I don't know! You're the ghost! Think happy thoughts or something, man!"

 

I stopped. Maybe it  _ was  _ my thoughts. I shut my eyes to focus. All right - what was warm? Sunshine. Florida. Cape Canaveral. The Kennedy Space Center. 

 

Sam and Tucker both sighed in relief and I opened my eyes. "Better?"

 

They nodded, Sam a little less sure than Tucker. Well, if she didn't want to be cold, she shouldn't wear sleeveless short shirts all the time. 

 

"Guess we found the cure for colds," I laughed. Sam groaned.

 

A few minutes later, we all found ourselves squished together again in front of Tucker's laptop. Sam had wrapped herself in my constellation-patterned comforter, still complaining of the cold, though she was pressed in on both sides by teenage boys. I think she just wanted a blanket.

 

The title screen of Dead Teacher 10: The Gardener flashed. We had all seen this one countless times, but it was still the only Dead Teacher that Sam actually enjoyed. As the predictable plot rolled along, I got bored. My eyes unfocused and I was having a hard time staying awake. School had taken a lot out of me today, and that blood blossom headache still lingered. I vaguely wondered if that had thrown off our readings.

 

Sam's smell and the pattern of stars on my blanket swirled together, creating a vivid dream where all three of us were stuck on a star. I kept trying to fly us away, but the star's gravity was too strong. In fact, it was increasing, and starting to collapse into a black hole. I tried to keep us safe and fly faster, harder, but the black hole was slowly drawing us in.

 

"Danny!"

 

I startled awake. Those shouts weren't all part of my dream, apparently. I took a moment to get my bearings... and then I was seriously confused. Why was I floating? For that matter, why were Sam and Tucker and other various things in the air, too? There was no warning, and we suddenly dropped.

 

Tucker, of course, reached right over to look at his laptop, which had fallen along with us and was now playing the last bit of the movie. Sam stood and rubbed her shoulder where she had landed on the ground. I winced and followed her to my feet.

 

"Sorry." I helped Tucker up and grabbed my comforter from the floor. "That was completely accidental, I swear."

 

"You were asleep, idiot." Sam rolled her eyes and whacked my head. "Of course it was an accident."

 

Tucker narrowed his eyes and pretended to glare at me. "At least my laptop's okay. But, dude, I guess we're not having any more sleepovers."

 

"You guys still have sleepovers?" Sam asked, with mockery dripping from every word. And hypocrisy. All of us still had the occasional sleepover, and used them as excuses when we had to hide out overnight and didn't want our parents to worry.

 

"Seriously, guys, sorry," I repeated. My face burned. What had that been about? Had I floated in my sleep before? It wasn't impossible. Sometimes I phased through my bed and woke up underneath it. Floating might have happened, but it was more dangerous. If my parents walked in and I was under the bed, I could make excuses. If they found me hovering whole feet above the bed...

 

"It's all good," Tucker said flippantly. "Who wants some beef?"

 

I smiled halfway, still embarrassed. "I'll get my shoes on." I crouched down to fish for my sneakers. 

 

"If you're talking about Nasty Burger, I'm in, too," came Sam's voice from above me. "But don't call it 'beef'. It's demeaning."

 

"To what, the cows or the workers?"

 

"Both!"

 

"Lighten up, Sam. It's just a burger."

 

Before Sam could reply, I popped up. "Ready?" She scowled.

 

My friends gathered their backpacks and walked out of my room. Well, Sam more stomped, but that might have been because her boots were heavy. Or she was still peeved at the conversation.

 

"Oh, wait a second, guys," I said just before we walked out the door. I ran downstairs to the lab, where Mom and Dad were busy with some new invention to make my life miserable, though in their defense, it wasn't on purpose. I reached for a few small ectoguns that were in a box next to the stairs. With any luck, they'd be too busy to notice me.

 

Something beeped. Dad turned around, brandishing a new weapon, and Mom was close behind him. I froze. Just my luck.

 

"Ghooost!" Dad shouted. "Oh. Hey there, Danny boy. What are you doing down here?"

 

"Um," I stammered, thinking fast. "Just getting some guns for... target practice. Yeah."

 

"This late at night?" Mom said, lowering her own giant gun.

 

"Mom, it's only seven."

 

She looked at the ghost-themed clock on the wall. "Huh. Well, go have fun! It's good to see you and your friends take an interest in ghost hunting."

 

I gave a wide and uncomfortable smile, then dashed back up the stairs. 

 

"But what about the ghost?" Dad said from behind me, sounding disappointed.

 

"Danny ate a ghost cookie, remember, Jack?"

 

That was all I heard before shutting the door. I juggled the guns in my hands - not literally. Sam and Tucker were waiting on the porch, their argument about burgers resumed. I ignored them and opened Tucker's backpack to slip the guns inside. He gave me a funny look.

 

"Why the guns?" he asked. "Unless I'm wrong, Sam's got enough weapons hidden under her jacket for all of us."

 

"For my fries," I grinned. "Easier to sneak the 'plasm in the gun than just the tubes or something." Tucker nodded, accepting my explanation, and hopped down the stairs. I followed him, Sam right next to me.

 

"I don't get this weird new quirk of yours," she said quietly to me. Tucker happily led the way, PDA shining on his face. I watched our feet. 

 

"What weird new quirk?"

 

Sam shoved my shoulder and I stumbled. "You know. Actually digesting ectoplasm. It can't be healthy."

 

"Tucker's fine. My dad's fine. I'm fine." I shrugged. "And besides, I think... I think it's necessary now."

 

She didn't reply for a moment. When she did, she was hesitant. "Do you think you're addicted to it?"

 

I almost stepped up the curb again. The question wasn't a complete surprise, since I had wondered the same thing a dozen times. But something told me that no, it wasn't quite an addiction.

 

"No. At least, I really don't think so." I took a deep breath. "I thought that, too, at first. But I tested it. I was able to go two weeks without eating anything weird, but my powers were getting weaker and I always felt hungry. So I had some more. And it went away after a while, just like I would expect my normal hunger to act."

 

"So..." Sam said, drawing out the sound to give her time to think. "Do you feel normal hunger while you're Phantom?"

 

"Yeah."

 

"And the injuries you get while fighting ghosts don't magically disappear when you transform back, right?"

 

"... Right," I agreed slowly. "But they do heal."

 

"That's not the point. The point is - your two halves blend together. You're still one person," Sam explained, though she didn't sound completely sure herself. "If the human needs food, the ghost feels it. And I guess it's true vice versa, too."

 

I blinked, realizing where Sam was going. "And since my ghost side is displaying new powers and whatever, it might need its own sort of food, too."

 

"Exactly." We kept walking in silence. Tucker continued obliviously on, until we turned the last corner. The Nasty Burger's neon sign lit up the dying day, but it was the new lights that stopped us in our tracks.

 

"What do we do about that?" Tucker asked, referring to the unexpected ECU squad setting up an ectocontamination detection doorway.

 

I sighed and dug around in my pocket. "Are you guys okay if we eat out here?" After a few emphatic "yes!"s, I smiled ruefully. I didn't like being the reason to change plans, but it wasn't that big of a deal. We'd eaten in the park before.

 

"Here, Tuck, get me my normal double burger with fries." I dumped a handful of dollar bills into Tucker's hand.

 

Sam waited for Tucker a few steps away, and he shrugged out of his backpack and bounded away after her. "See you soon!" He called back at me. I waved and slung his abnormally heavy bag onto my back.

 

"Ugh, Tuck, what do you put in this thing?" I grumbled as I made my way to the park bench across the street, though the weight didn't actually bother me too much. Cars passed in front of me, and I stared at the Nasty Burger, watching people in the lit windows moving around. Stupid ECU. I seriously hoped this wasn't permanent.

 

Somebody cleared their throat, and I jumped. Anna, that annoying girl in charge of the school's decontaminatin earlier that day, had snuck up on me. At least I knew she wasn't a ghost, I thought bitterly. My ghost sense would have gone off. Too bad I didn't have a dangerous human sense. 

 

"What do you want?" I asked, not very kindly. I was still wary from our last... encounter.

 

Anna got right to the point. "Why didn't you go in with your friends?" She gestured to the Nasty Burger with her gun.

 

That wasn't her business, but saying so might put her on guard. It would make her think that I was trying to hide something.

 

So I shrugged. "Didn't want to cause another ruckus, I guess. And I didn't think you'd let these weapons in," I added, thinking that the guns in Tucker's backpack were a better excuse than my first one.

 

"We'd have to let you," Anna said grudgingly. "Just like I let your girlfriend in with her abnormally large arsenal." I scowled in protest of the word 'girlfriend', but Anna interrupted again. "Why do you both need blasters, anyway? Do ghosts attack you?"

 

I almost laughed. Yeah, ghosts did attack me, but that wasn't what the guns were for. "Sometimes," I replied, pretending not to notice Anna's mocking tone. "But we're just out for target practice tonight." Hey, if it worked with my parents, it would work with her, right?

 

"Well..." Anna hummed. I rather thought that she wanted to get me for something, but couldn't find a good excuse yet. I'd have to tiptoe around her in the future. Great. Just one more thing to worry about.

 

Luckily, she was interrupted by the arrival of Sam and Tucker, holding three bags of greasy Nasty Burger between them. Well, Sam's was less greasy, but the smell of tofu canceled that out.

 

"Hey," Tucker said, slightly out of breath. Had they run over? "Whatcha doin'?" He attempted a flirtatious smile. Anna looked repulsed.

 

"Establishing an anti-ghost perimeter around hot spots," she said formally. Sam gave me a worried look. 

 

I raised an eyebrow. "Why the creepy doorways? You could just use a ghost shield."  _ Pleaseusetheghostshield pleaseusetheghostshield. _ I could get through those really easily.

 

"Eventually, we will have set up shields, contaminant detectors, and ghostly activity sensors around all of the big haunting spots - here, Casper High, the mall, and some government buildings that require extra security." Anna looked proud.

 

"I guess we'll be seeing a lot of each other, then," I sighed dramatically. She gave me a questioning look, so I added, "I eat a lot of cookies."

 

"Speaking of," Sam interrupted. "We can't let these fries go cold!" She shook the bag to illustrate, then grabbed my arm and backed away. Tucker followed reluctantly. "It was nice meeting you! I'm sure we'll see you around! Bye!" We dove behind a clump of trees, out of sight.

 

"Um, thanks?" I said, picking myself up off the ground.

 

"I wonder if she'll give me her number," Tucker said, picking out a fry from one of the two bags he was holding. I dropped his unnecessarily heavy backpack.

 

"Really, Tucker?" Sam leveled one of her Goth Glares (TM) at him. 

 

"Whaaaaat?" Another fry disappeared.

 

With an angry puff of breath, Sam plopped down on the ground and started to lay out her food. "That girl is going to be such a problem for us, and you're talking about asking for her  _ number _ ."

 

There was one word in that sentence that my brain caught on. "Wait, a problem for  _ us _ ?" I snatched my own bag from Tucker's hand and pulled out the burger, frustrated. This was  _ my _ problem. Can't get to school?  _ My _ grades. Can't go to the mall?  _ My _ inflated savings jar. Sam and Tucker were free to do as they pleased.

 

"Yes, us," Sam snapped. Wisely, Tucker didn't say anything. He dumped his fries out on a napkin on the grass, along with at least seven ketchup packets.

 

"You don't have to worry about it," I grumbled. "You have your own lives to live."  _ And I have half of one to make up for, _ I thought to myself.

 

"A life? Yeah, right," she shot right back. "We fight ghosts. We keep your secret. That's our life."

 

I fumed for a moment. I knew that my constant ghost fighting was hard on them, and I often wished there wasn't as much to do. All the same, I liked having my friends around. It was easier on me, for one, and they always had my back.

 

"She's right, ya know," added Tucker, unexpectedly and definitely unhelpfully. Well, if he didn't have a life, either...

 

"Well, then," I forced out. "Maybe you should go get a life. And leave me alone." Sam would probably storm out. I didn't want to end the night like that, but I couldn't let them continue to throw their own grades and stuff down the toilet because I was needy.

 

She didn't even stand up. Tucker looked stricken, but returned to his fries. In the pause, I zipped open Tucker's backpack, grabbed an ectogun, and popped its little store of ectoplasm right out. I glared at the glowing green stuff, its very existence at this picnic frustrating. The glow seemed even brighter in the dusk.

 

"Obviously, I can't make it about you," Sam finally said. "Even if that's the way we feel." She didn't sound angry anymore. I met Tucker's surprised look, until we both remembered we were upset with each other. Sam took a deep but short breath and stared at her tofu burger. My anger started to ebb.

 

"You know one of the reasons I'm goth?"

 

I blinked. That wasn't what I'd been expecting. 

 

"Not the whole reason, of course, but one of them? I always  _ loved _ fantasy and stuff. With my whole heart. I used to pretend that I could see fairies and talk to them. I distracted myself from boring places my parents took my by imagining the cool stuff I would do if a dragon attacked or something." Sam smiled a bit. I could sort of relate, kind of. I liked to pretend I was up in space in situations like that. Maybe that sort of thing was what she was talking about.

 

"Goth stuff was always one step beyond reality," Sam continued, her eyes locked on the burger she was still holding. "When you're goth, it's okay to pretend that vampires and zombies and monsters and stuff are real. Heck, you're expected to." I snorted despite myself. It didn't break Sam's stride. "I'd given up believing in that stuff, but I'd never stopped longing for it. Then here you come along - " She looked up at me, another curious smile creeping across her face. I felt my own heat up. " - nerdy and adorable and with your head constantly up in the stars. I was jealous. At least  _ your _ dreams were possible. And... then the portal thing happened." I started to understand where she was going, and looked down at the tube of ectoplasm I was still holding.

 

[Aside: plus, if Danny gets ousted, so do they. I mean, it's not like they've never lied to their parents or stolen tech or done anything illegal. Right?]

 

"Suddenly, I was different. It wasn't me in that portal, and I don't know if I would want it to be, anyway. But I have  _ proof _ I'm not just one of the crowd anymore." Sam grinned up at me and rubbed the skin beside her eyebrow, where a pale scar still lingered. I winced, but her eyes shone. "I actually have a  _ secret _ to keep, Danny. I'm a ghost hunter, and know things even your parents the experts don't. And I love it. I love being your friend, and I want to worry. If you don't want to hear about how I do it because you're my friend, consider that I do it for  _ myself _ ."

 

I broke Sam's gaze. She was getting emotional. I thought I understood, at least partly. I tried to imagine what it would be like to suddenly have one of my dreams standing right in front of me, and getting to participate in it. Like getting approached by NASA for their Junior Astronauts program. My face relaxed into a contented smile, and I twisted the top off the tiny glass tube of ectoplasm. I tilted it towards Sam.

 

"Want some?" I asked, meeting her eyes again. She blinked.

 

"What?"

 

I shrugged, my smile growing more. Her confusion was hilarious. I mean, I'd definitely be confused if our roles were reversed, but it was funny anyway. I felt more than saw Tucker look up, too.

 

"It made Tucker talk in ghost," I tried to explain. "It might do something different and similar to you."

 

Sam gave the tube a curious once-over, then flicked her eyes up to me, still skeptical. I wiggled my eyebrows as best I could, which probably still wasn't very good. "It doesn't have a faaaace," I sang.

 

We spent the rest of the meal laughing at Sam turning partly invisible at random times. It was, frankly, hilarious to see her tofu burger being eaten by an invisible head. And half of a Sam razzing on Tucker for his girl-centric attitude? Consider me dead and buried.  _ Ba-dum tishhh. _

 

Unfortunately, we had to split up when the sun set completely. It was a school night, so Sam's parents wanted her home before dark ("But I'm goth! I thrive on the night!") and Tucker wanted to get at least  _ some _ homework done. He decided to keep the one drained ectogun and two functional ones. We had various stashes in places all over town, and I figured that he'd just swing by our hideout or something and stick the weapons there. 

 

Sam and Tucker lived relatively close to each other, while I lived across the park, so we said goodbye and walked opposite directions. Only a few steps later, I shivered with a sudden burst of cold that made my breath fog strangely in the air.

 

"Aw, man," I muttered under my breath. I ducked into an alleyway and watched my friends for a moment as they got farther away. They were good to head home. I could handle this - I could tell that the ghost I was sensing wasn't very strong. This would be over in a few minutes if I was lucky.

 

When I was sure nobody was around, I felt for the vague nebula of ice energy that always sat in my chest. As best as I could tell, it was my ghost core. It only got colder when I transformed, but the cold didn't bother me. I had always thought that the cold was normal, that it was just a ghost thing, but if I was uniquely ice... what did other ghosts feel? What about Vlad? It would be so weird to feel, I dunno,  _ fire _ and heat instead of cold. 

 

I shook my head to focus when I felt my ghost sense go off again. The ghost was getting closer, but I was even more sure that it wasn't one of the strong ones. I launched myself high into the air. It wasn't hard to find the ghost, since it was almost dark and ghosts glowed. This one had chosen the park we had just vacated, ironically. I dropped down, almost touching the ground, and got a cheap shot at it before getting a good look.

 

This ghost was animal-based, as many of the weaker ones were. It was shaped like a giant white snake with red eyes that glowed evilly as it turned around to face me. A long tongue flicked from its mouth. Ew. That was the worst part about snakes. Well, that and their speed. I barely dodged the snake's first strike. As I landed on the ground behind it, I noticed the trail of flattened grass it was leaving behind it. I grinned, sensing a weakness.

 

The snake whirled up to bite at me again, but I jumped into the air and stayed there, floating above its head. As expected, the snake just sat there, swaying, glaring at me from the ground. Yep, it was earthbound. Strange, for a ghost.

 

"No flying for this snake," I laughed, then sighed. "That sounded cooler in my head. Snakes don't usually fly, do they? Oh well." I shot at the snake a couple of times, mostly just practicing the curves and fancy things I'd been working on, until the snake smoked on the grass. I unclipped the Fenton Thermos from my belt, spun it around a few times, and sucked the snake in. The meter on the side blinked at me. I'd have to eject this one into the Ghost Zone before too long.

 

I hummed a few notes of a song stuck in my head and started to drift towards home, but stopped dead when the sound of an ectogun powering up reached me. I turned, fully expecting to see my parents, or maybe even Valerie the Red Huntress. And... nope. Anna the EctoContainment Unit recruit stood below me, pointing the nasty gun she had had earlier at me. I flipped upside-down and lowered to talk to her.

 

"So... how ya doing?" I asked, attempting to lighten the mood. No such luck. Ghost hunters were so stupidly serious. What, did they think I was going to play a Jedi mind trick on them or something? Ha. Well... thinking back to my parents' teachings... yeah. Yeah they did.

 

"Phantom." And... yep, that was my name.

 

"What?" At least she hadn't called me "ghost." That was one thing she had on my parents. I clipped the Thermos back onto my belt.

 

"So that  _ is  _ your name. I just thought it was a marketing ploy," Anna said with a smirk. Her eyes, though, were angry.

 

"Uh..." I said eloquently. "Okay. Bye." I turned right side up and started to fly away, but a flying gob of goo passed me, a bit too close for comfort. I stopped for a second time in as many minutes and turned around.

 

"So... you've got better aim than my paaaains in the necks, the Fentons!" I corrected myself.

 

Anna scowled. "Of course I do. They're scientists, not field soldiers, like they pretend to be. Now get back over here and answer my questions."

 

I folded my arms. "This distance is fine, thank you."

 

A glare and slight whirr from the gun told me I was walking - um, floating - on thin ice. Ice. Ghost powers. Something there would work, right? Invisibility, for one. I couldn't just pop out of sight, though, she'd shoot, and I didn't think I could outfly that gun at this range. I had to distract her first. Hmm. Ice. Could I make that happen on purpose?

 

"I want to know what ghosts' weaknesses are," Anna said quietly. She stepped closer to me. "There's got to be  _ something _ that can fight every ghost with one hundred percent effectiveness." That sounded unrealistic, until I realized that humans had a lot of weaknesses like that: fire would burn everybody, a bullet would probably hurt everybody, and even too much water would drown everybody eventually. Anyway. I got back to my plan.

 

I went for a cold, icy glare. Anna shivered. Success!

 

"You seem to have forgotten something," I told her, a slow smile spreading across my face. I just couldn't hold it in. This was working!

 

"And what is that?" Anna asked dismissively. She no longer met my eyes, I noticed.

 

"I'm a ghost. And not even one of the evil, stupid ones, who can be trapped by a single ectogun." I could almost feel the cold myself, now, and knew that it had spread in a pretty wide circle around me. 

 

Anna's teeth were chattering, but she still tried to keep the upper hand. This was a useful tactic. "Who says there's only one?"

 

That made me pause, until I realized it didn't matter. If I activated invisibility and intangibility at the same time, I would disappear from their scanners for at least as long as it took to get out of range.

 

Instead of panicking, I laughed. It came out... creepy. Kind of like Vlad's laugh. Or Dan's. I stopped. Actually, this whole scare-the-person tactic was a lot like what one of them would do. I sighed and stopped consciously trying to lower the temperature.

 

"Look," I said. "That was kind of childish, so I'm sorry. I'm just going to leave now. See ya around." I went both intangible and invisible, and booked it into the sky and across town. Anna yelled at me from behind, but I was too far for her gun now. Or any others that might have been there.

 

It didn't take long to get home, which was good. I was tired from a lack of sleep, though the ectoplasm I'd had with my fries earlier had helped. It was kind of like caffeine without a crash. There was just a slow fade... and it was pretty much gone now. I slipped into an abandoned bunch of bushes and transformed back. I half-expected a wave of tired to hit me, as it sometimes did when I used a lot of ghostly energy, but I was pleasantly surprised. Normal tired, this time. I opened the front door.

 

Doo, doo, doo. Some warmed up spaghetti... The microwave sure was loud in the dark house. Jazz was gone to college already, and Mom and Dad were probably downstairs in the lab. I opened the fridge, a plate of spaghetti steaming on the counter, and hesitated. Eh, nobody would come up for a while. I grabbed a jar labeled "Ecto-Contaminated Cheese!!!" and dumped a bunch of slightly glowing shredded cheddar on my noodles. When I turned the kitchen light on, you couldn't even tell it wasn't just normal cheese. Unless you squinted. Or had some kind of ecto-locater. But really, who used those in this house? I snorted.

 

I happily ate my spaghetti at the table and answered Tucker's text from earlier.

 

_ 'Yep, I'm home. Sorry, a snake attacked' _

 

_ 'Dude' _

 

_ 'What' _

 

_ 'Snakes in amity? you're kidding. I hate snakes' _

 

_ 'Ghost snake. So normal' _

 

_ 'Oh that makes much more sense' _

 

I rolled my eyes and made my way upstairs, having eaten all the spaghetti. And another ectocookie. They were good, and nobody noticed, unlike when I snuck some of Dad's fudge.

 

A few minutes later, I lay on my bed, which I had to remake, since Sam had taken off my comforter. It still kinda smelled like her...

I sat up, alarm blaring, only to find myself hovering two feet above my bed.

"What in the - aah!" I fell. Geez. That sure didn't make my leftover bruises from falling onto the ground last night feel any better. I rubbed my forehead and turned my alarm off. Could I go back to sleep...? A glance at the red numbers on the clock said yes, but my bruises said no. Oh well. 

 

I slid from my bed and took the extra few seconds to find actually clean clothing. Usually, I just grabbed what was closest, since I was running late more often than not. If this floating thing insisted on happening every night, I'd start being on time. Ha, right.

 

Did Mom make breakfast every morning? I could smell potatoes and bacon and coffee. Wow, I was hungry. I made my way downstairs.

 

"Ghost detected," said a robotic female voice. I stopped and looked confused. It wasn't hard. "Ghost detected." Oh, wait, this was that one thing Mom and Dad had set up a year ago. I thought I had fiddled with it enough to ignore me, but apparently they'd made some upgrades.

 

Mom swung around and pointed a small ectogun at me. I flinched, but tried to hide it, instead just raising my eyebrow. The back of my neck prickled.

 

"Oh, it's just you, sweetie," she said in relief, then reached to switch the detector off. The gun disappeared somewhere into her hazmat suit. "You've been eating more cookies, haven't you?"

 

"Um, yeah?" I answered truthfully (for once), and finished entering the kitchen.

 

"Interesting. And they don't have any adverse effects?" Mom asked. She turned around again to stir the potatoes.

 

I thought quickly. Would she expect something like what Sam and Tucker had experienced? Since it had happened more than once, I decided to chance it. I poured some coffee into my rocket mug.

 

"Not really," I said carefully. "I'll go invisible for, like, two minutes sometimes, but that's okay," I hurried to add.

 

Mom hummed under her breath. "Maybe you should stop, honey. Ghost energy can corrupt a human."

 

Now  _ that _ was something that hadn't come up before. "What? How?"

 

"Exposure to a lot of ectoplasm and ghostly activity can make people start to act more like ghosts, with violent behavior and disregard for other humans," Mom explained.

 

"So... shouldn't everybody in this town act violent?" I pointed out. "After all, everybody's seen plenty of ghosts. And we were all dunked into the Ghost Zone that one time, too."

 

Mom considered, pouring potatoes onto a plate for me. I should get up early more often, I thought, watching the potatoes. They looked good.

 

"I suppose you're right about that," she said. "But I still don't think eating those cookies could be healthy."

 

"Don't worry, Mom," I said, my mouth full already. "I don't eat that many." I couldn't help but think of the nearly-empty bowl hidden in the pantry. "And a lot of them really have run away," I added, for completeness's sake.

 

"Well, all right," Mom said. "I suppose you're old enough to make your own decisions... Just be careful, okay? I can't guarantee a cure for anything that might happen."

 

Cure? I snorted. "I'll be okay, Mom. Thanks for worrying."

 

I finished my potatoes and rinsed my plate, though I couldn't help but wonder if they would have tasted better with the glowing ketchup rather than the normal kind. Oh well. I threw together a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (nothing glowing, unfortunately), then dashed out the door.

 

"Bye, Mom! See you later!"

 

I stuffed the lunch bag into my backpack, then found my bunch of bushes to transform. I didn't strictly need to today, but I had grown used to flying rather than walking to school. Plus it was more fun. 

 

Today, though, I had to stop well before the boy's bathroom at school. I looked in dismay at the bright green dome the ECU had, apparently, erected around our school. Upon closer inspection, I realized they hadn't set up any of those ectocontamination detector doorways, so I was safe. I just had to transform and walk through the shield like a normal kid.

 

Oh well. Today, I fine. Plenty of time to get to class.

 

And, of course, that was when my phone rang.

 

"Hello?"

 

"Danny, where are you?" It was Sam. She sounded anxious.

 

"Um... walking to school. And on time for once," I said.

 

"No, not on time!" Sam almost shouted. "I can't believe you forgot!"

 

"Forgot  _ what _ ?" I asked. I started to speed up.

 

"It's fun field trip day! The class is going to laser tag! Remember, Operation Get Dash?"

 

I choked and ran faster.

 

"That's  _ today _ ?" Every year, Casper High funded one "fun" field trip day for each class, as a counterpoint to the few boring ones we had. We'd gone bowling, ghost hunting (that was not as fun), and even went to the local food bank. Now, we were going to laser tag. It was a senior year tradition, and Sam, Tucker, and I had been looking forward to it since freshman year.

 

"Um,  _ yeah _ !" said Sam with a snark. "And we're lining up to get on the bus. Outside the new ghost shield, in case you were worried. So get your butt over here!" She hung up.

 

Now I was running flat-out to get to the bus on time. The potatoes I'd eaten sloshed around in my stomach, making me question my calendar-keeping skills. Out of all the things I had to forget, why did it have to be laser tag day? 

 

I barely made it. I skidded to the end of the line, just behind Sam and Tucker.

 

"Well, Mr. Fenton. Glad you could make it on time. For once," said the teacher, Mr. Lancer, marking something on the clipboard in his hands. His uninterested voice was as monotone as ever. Did he ever have fun? I wondered sometimes.

 

I laughed guiltily. "Yeah, well, my mom made breakfast." Then I dashed up the bus's stairs before he could say anything else.

 

Inside, the bus was ridiculously noisy. The entire (fortunately tiny) twelfth-grade class was packed into one bus: A-listers in the back, then the B kids, and all the nerds and unpopular dorks in the front. Well, at least we didn't have far to walk, and we were a respectable distance from Dash and his cronies. Unfortuately, that also meant we were closer to Mr. Lancer than I would have preferred.

 

"Sorry I forgot, guys,"I said once we were sitting down. The benches were made for two people, but all three of us were pretty skinny and didn't mind squishing.

 

"You're here, dude, so who cares?" Tucker, as usual, got straight to the point. Then he took his PDA out and pulled out some drawing app.

 

"All right," he said seriously. "Let's get down to business. Operation Get - " he cut off, glancing at Lancer, who was talking to the bus driver. Tucker lowered his voice. "Get Dash. Anyway. I hacked the laser tag place's computers - their security was pathetic, by the way - and got the layout for the floor."

 

Sam leaned in from Tucker's right. "Not bad," she commented. "Glad to see this new hunk of junk is doing something useful."

 

"Oh, yeaahhh," Tucker smiled, patting the PDA. "Nancy's got beautiful 3D rendering, so I ran the layouts through those programs to get this." He scrolled expertly around the model on the screen, which was, indeed, a 3D version of what I assumed was the laser tag arena.

 

"So... we just hop around those walls and shoot each other with fake guns?" I asked. I had never actually been to laser tag before. Our family outings tended to use more ectoguns than that. I considered myself a good shot, anyway.

 

Sam and Tucker looked at me blankly.

 

"You've never been laser tagging before?" Sam said in disbelief.

 

I shrugged. "No. But Tuck's only been once, right?"

 

"Twice, but I see your point," Tucker answered.

 

Sam sat back. "No wonder you guys are so bad at Doomed."

 

"I'm good at video games!" I shot back, but Tucker interrupted.

 

"Anyway," he said, drawing the word out and shooting an annoyed look at Sam. "I'm thinking the Grab and Flea strategy."

 

"Um... Tuck?" I said. "That requires invisibility. And I'm not going to do that in a crowded room, especially a crowded room that probably has ectodectors."

 

"So? It's going to be dark," Tucker whined. I gave him a flat glare. "...But I guess we could always try the Duckling. That doesn't directly rely on any of your powers."

 

"You're forgetting that Dash is going to be surrounded by the football team," Sam interjected. "And very possibly the basketball team. We need to approach this differently. I recommend the Distracto Button."

 

"But that needs a fishhook. I don't wanna be the fishhook again," Tucker complained.

 

Sam rolled her eyes. "You won't need to be, Tuck. Dash is probably going to find Danny within seconds, anyway."

 

"I can't be the fishhook!" I burst. "That would only leave you two to fend for yourselves against the sports teams. Not happening."

 

"Danny, relax." Sam reached across Tucker to put her hand directly on top of my head, the way she did when she thought I was being overly dramatic. "It's not a life and death situation. Just a game. We're going to be fine."

 

"I do think it's the best choice," Tucker added. That didn't help.

 

I glowered. Even if Same was right, and this was just a game, I still didn't want to be the  _ bait _ . "The Soup Can," I suggested surlily. 

 

Sam sighed. "Thermoses don't work on humans, and especially not the entire football team in the middle of a field trip. And besides, you won't be flying."

 

"Butter Baby?"

 

"I seriously doubt Dash is going to want to talk to any of us long enough to fall for that."

 

"Cottage Cheese!"

 

"No ectoweapons, Danny! This is just laser tag!" Sam threw up her hands in exasperation.

 

"Fine. Distracto Button it is," I sighed.

 

Tucker piped up. "We can start out in Ninja formation. It works best when Danny isn't..." he looked around, realizing that he was being loud. "Uh, wearing shoes?" I winced at Tucker's attempt at a save. Luckily, it didn't look like we were being listened to, so I let it go.

 

"All right," Sam continued, all business now that she wasn't arguing with me. "First phase: Ninja, second phase: Distracto Button - Danny as fishhook, Tucker as the right wire, me as left. Oh, and if we add the Wedge to that beforehand, we should be able to get Dash alone. Then when that's over, another simple Ninja should keep us relatively safe until the end."

 

"Sounds like a plan," I agreed. Then sighed again. "I guess I'll just have to get over being the fishhook." 

 

"Yep!" said Tucker happily. He shoved his PDA back into our faces. "Now let's figure out exactly where."

 

We spent a good five minutes finding the optimal place for our strategy, and even assigned a few backup plans in case the football team did something we weren't expecting. The probabilities of that were low.

 

"That wall should be good cover," I pointed out. Sam agreed with a nod and opened her mouth to add something, but we were interrupted.

 

"And what are you three discussing?" asked Mr. Lancer from right in front of us. 

 

I stopped and exchanged a look with Sam. Tucker buried himself deeper into his PDA. How much had Lancer heard?

 

"Video game strategies, Mr. Lancer," Sam said nervously, though she did a good job of hiding it. He was fooled, and sighed.

 

"Even you three are talking about video games? I swear, those things have taken over the lives of every one of my students."

 

Unexpectedly, the bus lurched to a stop. The chatter on the bus grew even louder as the students realized that we had arrived. Mr. Lancer tried to stand and yell some instructions, but it was hopeless. He was the first off the bus, then tried to mark every student on his clipboard as they poured onto the street.

 

The class made a loud entrance into the building, filtering in two or three at a time. The school wasn't very large, thankfully. Tucker, Sam, and I were the front edge, far enough away from the A-listers that they didn't notice us, but close enough that we all got on a different team. All according to plan. The safety rule spiel was brief but firm, and to my relief, they didn't say anything about ghosts..

 

Tucker had to help me figure out all the straps and stuff on the vest part, but luckily for me, it wasn't that hard. The point systems weren't turned on yet, but the football team was having fun shooting lasers at each other. I rolled my eyes and shot at the wall. Apparently, I was lucky. My laser gun had pretty true aim, while Sam's was wild and Tucker's was just a little off. Oh well. We'd dealt with my parents' weapons before, and some of Dad's ideas involved a barrel pointing a completely different direction than where the projectile actually ended up going. "Confuse 'em," he'd said.

 

The class was let out into the big room where it all happened. Finally! It was darker than I expected. Just a few black lights and neon paints on the walls lit the place up. Somewhere in the distance, a fog machine hissed, and it got even harder to see. The fog-machine smell filled the air, and I wrinkled my nose at it. Bleh.

 

"These aren't ideal conditions at all," I grumbled as the class poured out of the small "armory". 

 

"It's not meant to be," Sam said, a huge, uncharacteristic grin on her face. "It's a game!"

 

We hurried to the wall we'd chosen to begin at and took our places in the Ninja formation. It was stupidly simple, designed for those times I couldn't use my powers. Calling it Ninja had been Tucker's idea, like a ninja star. That had started a whole wave of naming our different strategies slightly nonsensical things, which I hadn't originally seen the point of. As our ghost fights got more intense, though, simply yelling out a word or three got a lot easier than taking a ten minute time-out to discuss strategies.

 

"All right, Casper High seniors!" A perky male voice came over the crackly intercom. Loud techno music started playing. "We're about to start round one of three! Remember: no running, no physical contact - " I snorted. Dash would break that rule in half a second. " - and have fun!" The music got even louder, making me wince. Our guns lit up and made sci-fi "booting up" noises.

 

"Here we go," said Tucker excitedly from behind me.

 

"Three - two - one - " said a robotic voice over the intercom. "Go!" 

 

Almost immediately, I started to pump the trigger at the people around us. The gun didn't shoot as fast as I wanted it to, but I got plenty of people who just ran all over the place. Was this how they acted during ghost attacks? No wonder I had so much to do.

 

Sam and Tucker, their backs towards mine, started to move. We had a lot of practice understanding each other, so it wasn't very difficult to get from one hiding place to another. An entire minute had passed before I shouted over the din of music and recorded blaster sounds. At least the fog had started to disappear, since the machine had switched off earlier. 

 

"We need to move out of cover!" I said. "The point is for Dash to find us!"

 

As expected, it took only seconds of us being out in the obvious open for Dash and the football team to come out of the fog. I pretended not to notice, but signaled my friends and moved away from them to make myself a better target. Geesh, I hated being the bait. Hooray for the Distracto Button. 

 

"You're dead, Fen _ turd _ ," Dash said. He smiled meanly. 

 

"Real original, Dash," I muttered. I had stopped being intimidated by this guy long ago, but for some reason he still liked to try to hit me.

 

The football team fanned out inexpertly behind Dash. I was pleased to see that they took the exact places that Tucker had predicted they would. That meant this ambush would go even better than expected. We'd get to use our primary plans on, like, everything.

 

... of course, that meant a few new bruises for me. At least the ones from the snake last night had mostly disappeared.

 

As I looked around in fake desperation, I caught sight of Valerie. She was moving through the darkness with practiced ease, stalking the group of A-listers near the football team. I had to suppress a smile at the image of them being pounded by the Red Huntress. I hoped that having her there would make it easier, not harder, for Sam and Tucker to complete their parts of this plan.

 

Dash approached me alone, his laser gun forgotten by his side. I did my best to look scared and small, and apparently I did a good job. The other buff guys who had hung back chuckled. 

 

"Looks like you're all alone. In the dark." Dash laughed. I was tempted to roll my eyes. That wasn't even funny. He reached for me and I shied away.

 

"No - no physical contact," I stammered. Dash's grin grew wider.

 

"And who's gonna enforce that rule, wimp?" Dash looked to the side. "Kwan? Butch? Nah, they won't squeal." He grabbed the front of my shirt and towed me in. I braced for impact.

 

Stars. Weird how a punch to the eye put me exactly in the place I'd always wanted to be.

 

I knew real pain wouldn't come for a moment longer, since this wasn't my first rodeo, but I played it up anyway. Dash wasn't nearly smart enough to realize that most punches didn't hurt as much as he thought they did, especially when his victim (me) was used to being literally tossed around by ghosts three times his size. And with a thousand percent more brains.

 

I fell to the dirty black carpet, Dash having pushed me hard. The laser tag vest was stiff and jabbed into my neck. It made a few half-hearted noises, like some scared animal. I glanced around, realizing that the football team had disappeared, courtesy of my friends. Sam and Tucker were closing in on Dash from behind. Valerie was standing off to the side, eyebrow quirked. I hoped she fell for the act I gave Dash, too. It wouldn't be that good if she knew just how far we planned this, and how often we'd used this sort of attack before. 

 

Tucker caught my eye and signaled.

 

Finally, I thought. Fishhook time was over. I blinked my eyes hard a few times to clear them, then stood up with ease. Dash stepped backward on reflex, his expression dropping from intimidating to surprised. It was funny. I guess his usual punching bag (... me) didn't usually get up.

 

I quickly ran through what would happen next. If this was a typical Destructo Button, this would be about the time I would get a clean shot to the ghost's core from behind, but Dash wasn't a ghost. Nor was I a wire, not this time. I just held Dash's attention, and I think I kind of freaked him out with a bit of an unintentional cold ghost aura thing. Sam suddenly jumped out of nowhere, and she got the honor of pinning Dash behind a barrage of laser fire.

 

Tucker and I took our positions behind her, facing outward in our Ninja form again. The fog machine hissed on. I smiled maniacally with the thrill of our victory, even if it had been short. Sam continued to nail Dash over and over again, even as he tried to fight back and get to cover. He wasn't able to shoot back for a soldi few minutes. A few other students joined us, too, so Dash couldn't even start punching his way out. There were too many other people. Valerie stayed away, dodging my sad little gun's efforts. She preferred to pick away at the group from a distance, and got nearly everyone - including me, to my frustration. 

 

A countdown over the intercom began, letting us know that round one was almost over. The revenge wasn't much, but it was definitely sweet, especially because nobody actually got hurt. Just Dash's pride. And had  _ that  _ been a blow.

 

The next round, we weren't as lucky. We couldn't use the same strategy twice in a row, particularly with Valerie watching us suspiciously, so we hid up on a platform and tried to snipe off those who came close. It would have worked if there had been one less ramp up to the platform us three were using as a nest. And if Dash hadn't been so mad that he set the entire football team on us. And the basketball team. As it was, we had to jump down almost five feet out of a window and hide. We had been able to hold out long enough, though, and the second round ended just when we had gotten away.

 

The third round was almost just as bad, but it was the most fun. Sam, Tucker, and I ran around like crazy, not bothering to employ any strategies besides a basic Ninja. Even that barely happened. Eventually, we got stuck behind some low-lying walls, occasionally popping out to shoot somebody.

 

"So what do we do now?" Tucker asked, smiling. All three of us were hunched behind a tiny wall, facing the back of the room. We were safe for the moment, if sort of squished.

 

Sam dropped down, having just pegged a few clueless students. "What would we do if we were stuck here with ghosts everywhere?"

 

I shrugged. "Erect a shield, go ghost, stand up, let loose... typical Bash 'Em and Run."

 

"Your favorite," muttered Tucker.

 

"That's not what I meant, Danny," Sam snapped with a joke in her voice.

 

"If we were really fighting ghosts, you can bet your butt I would use my powers!" I replied defensively. "But you're right.  _ This _ is just laser tag. Crappy fake guns and black lights."

 

"And fog," Tucker added when the fog machine just above us started to hiss. Great. More of that fake chemical stuff. I poked my head above the short wall, trying to peer through the haze.

 

I saw Valerie's yellow hoodie approaching. As far as I could tell, she hadn't noticed us yet. Perfect. Time for some anonymous, but no less sweet, payback. I narrowed my eyes and aimed my gun, but before I could get off a shot, Sam pulled me down.

 

"Sam! I was just about to get Valerie!" I complained.

 

She didn't answer, but looked at me in the eyes with a stern expression. Tucker got Valerie instead, and Sam sighed in what I thought was relief.

 

"What was that about?" I asked, sulking.

 

"Dude, your eyes were glowing green," Tucker answered, coming back down to my level with wide eyes.

 

I blinked. "Uh... really? Usually that doesn't happen unless I want it to..."

 

Sam pushed my shoulder into the wall with annoyance. "Yes, really. You need to be more careful."

 

" _ You _ need to be more careful!" came a voice from just above us. We looked up to see Valerie standing there, grinning wildly. She shot all three of our vests quickly and disappeared, laughing, before I could get her back.

 

"I thought you got her, Tuck!" I said in confusion.

 

"I don't know, I couldn't really see her! There's a freakin'  _ heck _ of a lot of fog around here."

 

I tilted my head. "I could see her just fine..."

 

"Guys!" Sam hissed, her eyes barely above the wall. She probably blended in. "Football team, twelve o'clock!"

 

We all poked our guns out and shot in almost random directions. It was like the football team just  _ ran _ into our laser beams, honestly. We laid waste to them. Twice. They found us, though, since our stupid vests glowed. Like, seriously, how did people think laser tag was good practice for ghost hunting? The football team looked... more angry than usual. Dash, in particular, glared daggers at me when he found me. My eye twinged. Great, like I needed another bruise. It was probably a good thing it was Friday - he wouldn't know that the bruise would be gone by tomorrow, since I wouldn't see him again until Monday. Hooray, I wouldn't have to use my fake-bruise makeup kit pilfered from Sam's eyeshadows!&


End file.
